Legion of Super-heroes #0

[iamrman]

Writers: Mark Waid and Tom McCraw

Pencils: Stuart Immonen

Inks: Ron Boyd

---

The Crisis ruined it all for the Legion. Writers after writer tried to fix the problem, but only made things worse. (Things like pocket universes and whatever 5 Years Later was.) In the end, it was decided that there was no fixing the problem and the series got a total reboot. I am sure DC learned their lesson after that...

---

Upon reaching their destination, Imra, the telepath, senses that something is amiss.

R.J. Brande decides to repay the teens for saving him by having them form a superhero team. A legion of superheroes, if you will.

Comments

[icon_uk]

I unironically love the post-Zero Hour Legion.

The old Legion title, whilst I loved it growing up, and memorising the entire roster was a sort of rite of passage as a comic geek, had become so convoluted in trying to stay as a science-fiction series when half the science of it's "amazing future tech" was already science fact, and had been hamstrung by it's odd rules like "No married members" and "No one over the age of 18 can be a member" when half the cast were clearly in their late 20's like a CW show.

The Legionnaires title was a sort of trial run, but even then the characters were hamstrung by being younger versions of characters we already knew, so no chance to amend backstories or group histories etc.

So a complete reboot was the only sensible course of action to take.

It allowed them to keep the bits that worked; young heroes from across the United Planets joining together as a team, all the space opera you could want, and dump the bits that didn't: the tendency towards crass sexism, the fact it took until the latter half of the 1980's for there to be even ONE non-humanoid member. And add new ideas and concepts, like Daxamites tending towards militant xenophobia, some members wanting to join, and others resenting being drafted by their planet's government.

And by golly it worked (for me at least). It felt fresh and relaxed, and FUN! Which, for all it had some good stories, the other Legion title hadn't been in years.

[iamrman]

The only Preboot Legion story I have read is the Great Darkness Saga, so I wasn't especially invested in the series before it was rebooted. I do miss Cosmic Boy going full chest out though.

[icon_uk]

Oh sweetie, we ALL miss that! :D

[the_engineer]

Agree 100%, I loved this series.

[beyondthefringe]

I agree. The classic Legion had been bent into unrecognizability by Five Years Later and everything that came after. Characters murdered, aged, deaged, retconned. The Moon and Earth destroyed. An entire second team of temporal duplicates/clones/whatever running around. The Legion many people had grown up with was effectively dead.

This reboot was necessary ... and -fun- for a while. Of course, nothing good lasts forever...

[superfangirl1]

Does this version of the Legion of Super-heroes still exist in hypertime? Since DC comics decide to have hypertime and the Multiverse co-exist each other?

[icon_uk]

They showed up in "Infinite Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds", so I'm going with "Yes"

[scorntx]

They popped up for one panel in Infinite Crisis, then reappeared in Legion of Three Worlds where they set off into the multiverse to find any other survivors of destroyed universes.
Then Barry Allen happened.

But XS popped up recently in Geoff Johns' JSA, so... probably?
(Can't recall if DC's still using the Bendis Legion or they've re-rebooted them or what...)

[mazway_75]

This was needed as the continuity had become such a massive mess. And a rare bit where a clean reboot really worked for a while, old fans could enjoy it while newbies got in and it took off.

Of course, this being DC, it got messy again later on but those first couple of years were top tier for DC at the time and it (along with Starman) were the best things to come out of Zero Hour.

[remial]

my introduction was 5 years later, still thought it was awesome

[bruinsfan]

I mostly liked 5 years later too, though I started with the Legion back in the 70s.

[zylly]

There is a lot to love in the Archie Legion. While my favorite members — Wildfire, Dawnstar, and Blok — are from previous version, the new version brings us treasures like Gates and Monstress and especially XS.

I DO wish this version hadn’t been slightly embarrassed of some of what came before though. Chuck and Tenzil deserved better than being relegated to supporting cast.

[werehawk]

I picked up the vast majority of these issues from the 10 cent bin (no joke!) at a southern California LCS in the mid 2000s. I swear I bought 500-700 of their comics over a few visits including nearly 100 of these (after I read the first few I went back for the rest). It was a quiet time for me and these were a great read.

[esmegrey]

When I got online in the 90s, I made friends with some people who were really into the LSH, and they kinda made it their mission to get me into the book. It took them awhile, but they did eventually succeed, helped by the post Zero Hour books being a fresh start. It's funny that the first superhero comic I remember reading was Legion of Super-Heroes 303, but it took me another 10-15 years before I got them regularly.

Even though I have a huge Legion collection going back to before they even took over Superboy's book, this team is still my favourite, and very dear to me, and later reboots erasing some of the unique elements never to be seen again remains frustrating. (Translation: I'm still bitter that Kinetix has almost never appeared since Final Crisis)